Kamala Harris Declares Candidacy, Evoking King and Joining Diverse Field

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Who Is Kamala Harris? | 2020 Presidential Candidate

Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, is a former prosecutor and was elected to the Senate in 2016. Ms. Harris has struck a balance between campaigning as a progressive fighter and defending moderate aspects of her record.

A barrier-breaking prosecutor with a love for grilling — “Question, I will repeat” — roasting and music. “One nation under a groove, getting down —” California Senator Kamala Harris has joined the race for the White House. “I’m running for president of the United States. And I’m very excited about it. I’m very excited about it.” So who is she? Harris has a history of being the first. “You may be the first to do many things, but make sure you’re not the last.” In 2010, she was the first woman and person of African and South Asian descent to become California’s attorney general. “I decided to become a prosecutor because I believed that there were vulnerable and voiceless people who deserved to have a voice in that system.” And in 2016 she became the first black senator from California. “So my question to you —” Harris serves on four Senate committees, and is perhaps best known for her tough questions. “It makes me nervous.” “Is that a no?” “Is that a yes?” “Can I get to respond please, ma’am?” “No, sir.” “No, no.” She’s moved to the left in recent years. But her political message remains broad, stressing unity and togetherness. “We are all in this together.” She has defended immigrants’ rights, as well as public schools and Medicare for All. But her signature issue is criminal justice reform. “Crime is not a monolith. We cannot have a one-size-fits-all approach to criminal justice policy.” Critics on her left have called her record into question, arguing that she failed to embrace progressive reforms during her tenure as district attorney and California’s attorney general. So, what’s her dynamic with President Trump? Harris has voted against more Trump administration nominees than most of her peers. She has called Trump’s border wall: “his vanity project.” And the government shutdown: “a crisis of leadership.” For now, Trump has said little about her. So, what are her chances? Political strategists believe Harris may be better positioned to build coalitions than some of her party rivals. “This is our house.” But despite strong initial fund-raising numbers and a liberal donor network in her home state, she’s stagnated in the polls. As a relative newcomer to national politics, many voters may be waiting to hear more from Harris before making up their minds. “I voted.”

Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, is a former prosecutor and was elected to the Senate in 2016. Ms. Harris has struck a balance between campaigning as a progressive fighter and defending moderate aspects of her record.CreditCredit...Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Senator Kamala Harris, the California Democrat and barrier-breaking prosecutor who became the second black woman to serve in the United States Senate, declared her candidacy for president on Monday, joining an increasingly crowded and diverse field in what promises to be a wide-open nomination process.

In addition, Ms. Harris will hold her first campaign event on Friday in South Carolina, where black voters are the dominant force in the Democratic primary, rather than start off by visiting Iowa and New Hampshire, the two predominantly white states that hold their nomination contests first. She will hold a kickoff rally Sunday in Oakland, Calif., her hometown, and a town hall in Iowa later next week.

“The core of my campaign is the people,” Ms. Harris said at an afternoon news conference at Howard University, the historically black college she attended in the 1980s. “Nobody is living their life through the lens of one issue. And I think what people want is leadership that sees them through the complexity of their lives and pays equal attention to their needs. Let’s not put people in a box.”

Ms. Harris’s campaign is already facing skepticism from some in the party’s liberal wing, who believe she has lurched to the left only in recent years as preparation for a presidential campaign. She has repeatedly come under scrutiny from liberals for several “tough-on-crime” positions she took as a prosecutor in California, including defending the use of the death penalty as recently as 2015 and establishing a measure that sought to punish parents for chronically truant children.

Ms. Harris made her announcement during a morning interview on “Good Morning America.” She also released a video aimed at supporters and other Democrats, debuting a campaign slogan that played off her background as a prosecutor: “Kamala Harris For the People.”

“The future of our country depends on you, and millions of others, lifting our voices to fight for our American values,” Ms. Harris said in the video. “Let’s do this together: For ourselves, for our children, for our country,” she said.

Her announcement kicked off a day of tribute and outreach to black voters by Democratic presidential candidates and potential candidates. Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey and Bernie Sanders of Vermont made appearances, as did Ms. Gillibrand, Ms. Warren and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who expressed regret for supporting crime bills earlier in his career that have been criticized for disproportionately impacting black Americans.

A 54-year-old former California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, Ms. Harris is something of a bridge between the Democrats eyeing the race who are in their 70s, like Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders, and those in their 40s, like Mr. Booker and former Representative Beto O’Rourke. Further, while she hails from one of the country’s most famously liberal cities, she has ties to both the pragmatic and leftist wings of the party: She is rooted in the Bay Area’s Democratic establishment but has embraced a more progressive agenda since being elected to the Senate in 2016.

While other Democrats have focused their economic policy on regulating corporations or limiting the influence of Wall Street, Ms. Harris’s signature proposal is more focused on individuals and would provide lower-income families with monthly cash payments of up to $500. She has also proposed a bail reform bill that’s backed by several civil rights groups, and she focused her initial Senate work on curbing maternal death rates, particularly among black women.

Like many Democrats, Ms. Harris has sought to align herself with the party’s leftward drift in recent years, proclaiming her support for “Medicare for All” and, after an initial hesitation, disavowing most corporate donations. She has also embraced the legalization of recreational marijuana, a position she once rebuffed.

“She has long been a reform-minded prosecutor who struck a balance between the need for public safety and reckoning with civil rights ideals,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

But not everyone agrees that Ms. Harris can easily assuage Democrats worried about her record as a prosecutor and district attorney.

“If Kamala Harris wants people who care about dismantling mass incarceration and correcting miscarriages of justice to vote for her, she needs to radically break with her past,” wrote Lara Bazelon, a law professor, in an opinion piece for The Times last week.

Mr. Trump has thrust issues of race and identity to the forefront of the national debate, and with the Democratic coalition growing even more dependent on racial minorities, Ms. Harris — the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother — would represent a history-making contrast in a general election against the president.

As the first black woman in the Senate in over a decade, she garnered attention from her perch on key committees for her intensive interrogations of Trump administration officials and nominees, most famously during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“Did you have communication with Russian businessmen or any Russian national? Are you aware of any communications?” Ms. Harris asked Mr. Sessions during the tense exchange.

“You let me qualify,’’ Mr. Sessions responded. “If I don’t qualify, you accuse me of lying, so I need to be correct as best as I can. I’m not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous.”

Ms. Harris focused her initial campaign message on broad themes of unity and revitalization, which emphasize her unique status as one of — if not the — most viable black women to ever run for president. Her announcement video borrows language from “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the song and poem written in 1900 and long referred to as America’s “black national anthem.”

She has been compared to former President Barack Obama, who also ran for president just two years after coming to the Senate. But unlike Mr. Obama, who became a political celebrity even before he arrived in Washington, Ms. Harris has made her name since being elected to Congress.

“We can’t have business as usual, and I like that she’s not waiting her time — but she wants to make this time her own,” said Aaron Jenkins, a 37-year-old who works in education policy and attended the National Action Network’s breakfast honoring the King holiday on Monday.

Her centrist standing in the party could also turn out to be an asset. Her campaign advisers, which include several people who helped shepherd her from San Francisco to Capitol Hill, believe she is well-suited to build coalitions within the Democratic electorate, because she is not tethered to a single faction.

However, even before she formally entered the race, Ms. Harris was criticized by some in her own party.

One of her top aides, Larry Wallace, resigned in December after revelations that he was involved in a harassment lawsuit and a $400,000 settlement while working for the California Department of Justice. Ms. Harris has said she did not know about the settlement, but she apologized and took “full responsibility” for hiring Mr. Wallace.

Critics on Ms. Harris’s left have also called her record into question, pointing to a dramatic increase in the state’s prison population during her years in public office.

“Kamala Harris is a cop” goes one often-repeated criticism that floods the senator’s social media accounts.

“There were cases where folks who made a decision in my office and didn’t consult me and I regret that,” Ms. Harris said Monday when asked about some of her more controversial cases. “But there’s a lot of what I did as a prosecutor that I’m proud of.”

A Quinnipiac University poll in mid-December illustrated Ms. Harris’s potential, finding her with a favorable rating among Democrats but with the majority of respondents still wanting “to hear more.” About 40 percent of Democrats had a favorable opinion of her, compared with just 4 percent who viewed her unfavorably.

Ms. Harris, the first major candidate for president from California in over a quarter-century, could also benefit from changes to the 2020 nominating calendar. Her native state has moved up its primary to early March, immediately after the first four early-nominating states, presenting the possibility that she could capture a large trove of delegates just as the contest gets underway.

Republicans were quick to denigrate her candidacy on Monday.

“Kamala Harris is arguably the least-vetted Democrat running for president, but it’s already clear how unqualified and out of touch she is,” the Republican National Committee said in a statement, adding, “All she has to show for her brief time in the Senate is a radically liberal voting record.”

Ms. Harris’s campaign will be based in Baltimore with a second office in Oakland. Among the staff members she announced Monday was Maya Harris, her sister, who was a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and will serve as Ms. Harris’s campaign chair.

The campaign also premiered a logo that reads “Kamala Harris For The People” in blue and red letters across a yellow background. It was intended as another nod to Ms. Chisholm, who used a similar color scheme for her presidential campaign in 1972.